


And Soon, You'll Come In

by sayasamax3



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, F/F, Love at First Sight, mermaid au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-11
Updated: 2015-01-11
Packaged: 2018-03-07 03:57:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,337
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3160325
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sayasamax3/pseuds/sayasamax3
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kiyoko watches from the pier, and Yachi watches from the waves. Once, something is left behind.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And Soon, You'll Come In

It might be a bit odd, all things considered, but Yachi has never tried to take down a ship. 

It’s a bit mean-spirited, she thinks, to pick on humans for not having magic or the ability to breathe underwater, especially when they tend to drown. 

Also, boats scare her, they have nets and propellers and they smell and she’s not sure she’s exactly pretty enough to make sailors wreck their ships  _anyway_. 

But she knows someone who  _is_  pretty enough, who isn’t even a mermaid and is pretty enough, Yachi would  _definitely_  wreck all of her ships for her, if she were a human who had ships, because that seems to be the human protocol for responding to beauty and she understands why, a little, when her heart, wrought reckless by admiration, demands she say hello.

—

Kiyoko wouldn’t say she’s bored with her lot—there’s plenty to do in a fishing village, if one looked—but nonetheless, she finds herself taking up a strange and seemingly unending task.

The task is to lure a mermaid.

Well, not ‘a’ mermaid,  _‘the’_  mermaid—the one she thought was only an illusion the first time she saw her, blonde head bobbing with the waves, eyes of a color she can’t quite discern peeking at her from just above the water. 

But she’s not an illusion, the mermaid, she’s there every day, and Kiyoko even manages to point the mermaid out to her mother, who just shrugs and says, “Don’t worry, you’ll be safe as long as you don’t go in the water.”

Kiyoko doesn’t go in the water, even though she wonders what would happen if she did.  It doesn’t  _seem_  like this mermaid wants to hurt anyone, and no one in the village has had any accidents.  That could be a trick though, maybe, so she doesn’t go in.

She does tempt fate though, sitting on the pier with her legs dangling over the edge, her toes brushing the water as she stares at the mermaid, who stares back at her from across the waves.  She thinks, at this distance, she’ll be able to pull her legs up in time if the mermaid makes a move for her.  

Patient, Kiyoko wonders if the mermaid ever will.

—

“Uh, mom?”

Her mother is  _vast_ , not old but not quite young anymore, a clan matriarch who has grown and grown and grown with age,  her long, muscular tail and wide fin large enough to stir up storms but she never does, because she’s always taught Hitoka that causing trouble for humans just caused trouble for themselves.  Her hands are large enough to hold Yachi in her palms, and gentle enough not to harm her when she does. 

“What is it?” Her mother’s weary voice vibrates through the water around Yachi as her mother brings her closer to her eye level.

Yachi swallows, not sure how to start this conversation properly. 

“H-how do you, uh,” deep breath, she can  _do_ this! “How do you court someone!”

Her mother’s eyes, previously heavy-lidded with the need to sleep, snap open wide at the question.  “Courtship?  Oh?  Who’s the lucky fish?”

“Uh—“ Somehow, it had never occurred to Yachi that there might be something odd about admiring a human.  “Um.  She’s not. Ah, a mermaid?”

Her mother’s brow furrows, and a sudden apprehension fills Yachi.  Oh no, she’s done it now, she’s probably broken some ancient merfolk law that she would know, if only she hadn’t zoned out during her lessons so often last week, and her mother was going to have to kick her out of the clan.  All alone in the great big ocean, she’d inevitably fall in with a dangerous sort, maybe  _dolphins_  even, she’d become a bandit and eventually she would fall out with her co-conspirators and they would  _sell her organs to the humans_  so they could do—whatever it is they do with organs.  It’s probably something strange.  Humans are generally strange.

“Well, you sure like to make things hard for yourself, Hitoka,” her mother says after Yachi has well and truly wound herself up.  “But I suppose it happens to the best of us.”

That, Yachi thinks, does not sound like the words a proper matriarch like her mother would say when exiling someone. There may be hope yet.

“What do you mean by that?” She asks, sitting up on her mother’s palm.  “Mom, have you ever liked a human?”

“I—well, it was—ahah,” Her mother’s laugh is light and bashful and makes her seem  significantly less intimidating.  “Well, it was a long time ago.  In any case, who’s the lucky human, then?”

Yachi keeps her gaze off to the side as she responds, “I don’t really know?  I’ve never talked to her.”

“I see,” Her mother gives a decisive nod, “Well, last I knew humans are a bit afraid of us—might be the shipwreck thing, who knows?—so if you want to approach one, you have to start small…”

—

Kiyoko sees her.  She sees the mermaid at the far end of the pier, closer than she ever has before.

She sees her and she runs, dangerously, full-tilt down the wet pier, and if you asked her she wouldn’t be able to say why except that she desperately, desperately wants to talk to that mermaid.

But the mermaid sees her, hears her bare feet slapping against the soaked wood of the dock and startles, eyes (brown eyes, sweet and soft like a doe’s) going wide before she jumps back into the water and swims away so fast, Kiyoko can’t even spot a glimmer of her moving under the water. 

Kiyoko’s brow furrows and she can feel how her frustration makes her lips tremble.  She’s never been prone to emotional displays, but somehow, having been so close for the first time, only to have the mermaid flee, makes her want to cry.  It’s a near thing but she doesn’t, even though the briny sea breeze makes her eyes water, makes the sight of the open sea before her shimmer and shake. 

She wants to say hello.  She wants to hear that mermaid’s voice.  She wants to know why that girl stares at her day after day, and why she stares back, and why it feels  _special._  

She wants the mermaid to come back.

Disappointment swirls in her chest and behind her eyes, makes her head feel heavy so she has no choice but to drop her chin and stare down at her own feet—her own feet and the small, shining  _something_  that lies beside them.

Her heart pounds, harder than it did even while she was sprinting down the pier, as she kneels down to get a better look at what she knows, she’s  _certain_ , has been left behind just for her. 

There, sitting on the dark wood of the pier, is the most delicately carved pearl comb Kiyoko has ever seen.  Its opalescent surface burns pink and gold in the dying light of the sun.  On its face, a swirling design overlays a small round disk, and Kiyoko wonders if this is what the full moon looks like, when seen from under the waves.  

With careful, trembling hands she picks up the gift, and discovers underneath it something not unlike paper, only  _entirely_  unlike paper, like glass but thinner, more flexible somehow.  And something, something swirling and elegant is etched into its thin surface but she can’t read it, can’t comprehend, and again the disappointment pangs at her, reminds her that even if they did meet, there’s no guarantee that they would understand one another. 

Even so, just looking at the note makes her chest feel tight, like her heart’s outgrown her, so she picks it up too, in awe of its every aspect, and treasures in hand, looks out one more time to the sea.

There, on the waves, the mermaid watches.

And for the first time, Kiyoko smiles to her.

—

 _“If you want to approach one, you have to start small, with a gift.”_   


End file.
